Free Storm by Donna Jo Napoli

Besides, we’ve fed you only squid and mackerel and shark. That’s what all you predators get. Filthy squid and the worst kind of fish! So how? How?” He kicks at a wooden bucket sitting on the floor. “Impossible!”
    Now a roar comes. It’s my lion!
    A matching roar meets it from the next cage. Who’s that?
    “I am not taking the blame for this! It’s not my fault.” The man rushes off and clatters up the ladder.
    Everything has changed; the very air is charged. The creatures in my cage stand motionless, their eyes on the spot where the man was. Even Queen and The Male stand tall on their back legs. Something is going to happen, and all the animals know it.
    From somewhere off to the side comes a high-pitched fox howl. I’ve heard the foxes yapping at night, but this is the first I’ve heard them in daytime. The second one joins in. Though I know little about foxes—they live in the mountains, not near my family’s field—I understand what they’re saying now: They’re hungry. They smell what’s in the bucket. Their noses are keen. I’m hungry, too. I can’t smell the food, but I can imagine it. I think of sinking my teeth into strong, clean squid flesh. My mouth waters. I’m as hungry as when I was living in the cedar tree with Aban. Hungrier, even. I’m hungry all the time these days. I could howl too.
    Noise comes from the deck above.
    I grab Screamer by the scruff of the neck with one hand, like Queen likes to do, and quick push the straw with my other hand and both feet until it forms a thick pile near the back wall of the ship. I wriggle in under it, then peer out through a little peephole.
    Just in time, for someone’s clattering down the ladder again. And behind him a second man. A third. A fourth. The last one is gray. All are bearded, with head hair in tight curls. The first is the one who came down before, the one with long hair and a head band. The others wear turbans with long locks only at the temple.
    They each have a cloth sack slung diagonally across their chests. The sacks bulge, and I can see greens protruding. So there are four food-mongers, not one. I never dared look closely, so Ididn’t know. They hold those light-stones up high and look at the latticework cage, where two lions roar and flash pale orange through the holes.
    “See!” The man with the headband points.
    Hanging through the latticework near the top of that cage are strips of serpent. Three of them. The shrike’s treasure! What a funny bird. Is he saving them? What for?
    “Get down,” says the old man. He presses on the headband man’s shoulder.
    “What?”
    “Get down, Ham.”
    “What did I do? I didn’t do anything!”
    “I didn’t say you did anything. Just get on your knees.”
    Ham kneels, but he blows through his lips in disgust.
    The old man jerks his head toward another man—taller than Ham but slighter. “Go on, Japheth. Climb on his shoulders. Get those things down.”
    Japheth straddles Ham’s shoulders, and Ham gets to his feet and stands straight. The muscles in Ham’s back and shoulders bulge.
    Japheth swipes his long arm through the air. His fingertips graze one of the snake parts, for it swings now. “I can’t reach them.”
    “Stand on his shoulders.”
    “Are you crazy, Father?” Ham leans against the latticework. The lion inside roars and Ham stumbles away a few steps, withJapheth clutching at his head. The third man has to catch Ham to steady them.
    Roars come from the next cage. It’s made of latticework too.
    The sound of claws scraping on wood turns my stomach. The creatures inside either of those cages could rip all four of them to shreds. I retch into the straw and shove a fist in my mouth to quiet the gasping sounds.
    The old man jerks his head around. “What was that?”
    I am still as stone. Please, please .
    “Some animal shitting,” says Ham. “They do that, Father. You’re not the one who cleans it, or you’d know.”
    “Japheth and I take care of the lowest